Cultural and Natural Areas before Kroeber

Abstract

Kroeber's classic study of the “Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North America” has been invaluable to eth' nologists and archaeologists working with cultural phenomena more recent than the beginning of the Christian era. However, it has become increasingly evident that the cultural and natural areas of the neo-Indian (the term used by Griffin, 1946, p. 38) were not necessarily those of the paleo-Indian (the term used by Roberts, 1940, pp. 51-116). It is therefore my intent here to outline briefly, and without much detail, the cultural and natural areas of the paleo-Indian.I have focused my attention upon glaciation, because the presence of a continental glacier seems to have been a major factor of North American paleogeography in the periods here considered. Climate, which possibly is more the result of, than the cause of, glaciation, I have interpreted in terms of pollen levels, and any other phenomena that I could understand.